


The Perils of Falling for Protagonists

by haraya



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst and Humor, Crushes, F/M, Minor Fenris/Female Hawke, mostly angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-02-06
Packaged: 2018-09-22 08:22:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9596099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haraya/pseuds/haraya
Summary: Hawke and Varric discuss the latter’s blossoming crush on the Inquisitor, and his reservations regarding it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I was cleaning up my writing folder when I found this, which is a scene from [Could You Kiss Your Lover with a Mouth Like That?](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8176334) that I scrapped because it ruined the mood of the whole thing. Anyway, have some angst, friends.
> 
> Warning: Super sad. Read at risk of emotional trauma.

“Alright,” Hawke says, shocking Varric out of his concentration as she – somehow gracefully, despite the obvious lack of complete sobriety – falls into the seat across from his. “What’s troubling my trusty little dwarf?”

Varric looks up from the letter he’s been slaving over and glances around the Main Hall for some kind of clue. But there’s nothing, only the big fireplace behind him, and the solid stone table and chair beneath him, and his best friend across from him, looking at him intently.

“I don't know what you’re talking about,” he announces to the empty room, devoid of its usual gaggle of noble occupants at this time of night.

“Nope,” Hawke says, in a volume that qualifies less as saying and more as yelling. “Not going to work. Not on me. Something’s bothering you and I know it.”

“And how would _you_ know something’s bothering me?” he asks bitterly.

“Aside from the fact that I’ve known you ten years and seen you anywhere from bothered to befuddled to everything in between?”

“Ooh,” Varric says. "Big words. It’s official, then: Drunk Hawke has made an appearance.”

She waggles a finger imperiously. “No. No derailing the conversation, my hirsute little friend. Something’s bothering you.”

“And you’re absolutely sure about that?”

“Told you. I know you too well.” And then Hawke leans forward, elbows on her knees and says: “Also, before we went to Adamant, the Inquisitor straight up told me, _‘Hawke, something's bothering Varric.’_ So there.”

That sobers Varric up. It sobers him enough for both of them, and then some.

“I see,” he says.

“Yes,” Hawke says. “So?”

And then, in a kind of queer chest-gripping panic, Varric says: _“Hawke, something's bothering me.”_

“Yes, we’ve established that. Now, if we could move on to the part where you tell me what, exactly, is bothering you…?”

“It’s the Inquisitor.”

Hawke stares at him, as if peering through a visible haze of inebriation, and says: “The Inquisitor is bothering you?”

“Yes!” Varric says, followed by: “No! Not… _no._ She’s not bothering me. _I’m_ bothering me.”

“You’re… bothering yourself.”

Emphatically: _“Yes.”_

“And the Inquisitor is involved _how?”_

“Because she’s _pretty,”_ Varric says desperately.

Hawke blinks, very slowly, before she straightens up in her seat. “Either you’re not making any sense,” she says seriously, “or I’m more drunk than I thought.”

“Both,” Varric says, the now-familiar dejected feeling settling around him like a blanket. “I reckon it’s both.”

“Oh, good,” Hawke says. “It would be a terrible thing, wouldn’t it, to be sober and hear what I think I’m hearing.”

Silence settles between the two friends, broken only by the crackling of the fire in the hearth and the soft _fwip-fwip_ of the quill turning uneasily in Varric’s hands.

And then Hawke shoots up straight in her chair and exclaims, vaguely horrified: “You like the _Inquisitor!”_

“I know!” Varric exclaims in the same tone. “I can’t believe it either!”

“This is so weird. _So weird._ I mean… you’re _Varric!”_

“What does _that_ mean?” Varric says, slightly offended.

“I _mean,_ you’re _Varric!_ In ten years, I’ve only ever seen you flirt with your crossbow! You’ve turned down, like, three proposals from the daughters of Merchant Guild members! You only ever looked at Isabela’s breasts because they were at your eye level!”

“I know!” Varric groans. “It’s terrible!”

“Well, I wouldn’t call it _terrible,_ exactly,” Hawke says, scratching the back of her neck awkwardly.

“It’s awful, Hawke!” Varric says, talking over his friend in the desperate tones of a dwarf beginning the slow descent into madness. “The Inquisitor. _The Inquisitor!_ Andraste’s _ass,_ of all the people in Skyhold, I had to fall for the _protagonist!”_

“I—the _what?”_ Hawke says, and remains thoroughly ignored.

“Damn, Tethras, you really screwed up this time!” Varric mutters to himself. “A bloody _protagonist!_ I’ll end up like Broody!”

“What do you mean you’ll _end up like Broody?”_ Hawke protests. “Nothing’s happened to Broody!”

“You’re kidding, right?” Varric says, seeming to register Hawke’s presence once more. “Elf got together with you and ended up having to flee Kirkwall and go on the run for _three years!_ And _then_ he gets left behind to hunt Tevinter slavers in some Maker-forsaken backwater, while you trip and fall into the Fade!”

“Look,” Hawke says, “it’s not like I _wanted_ to leave Fenris—”

Varric lunges across the table to grab fistfuls of Hawke’s tunic. “I don’t want to flee Kirkwall and go on the run for three years, Hawke! I _like_ Kirkwall!”

“Varric, calm down! No one’s making you flee Kirkwall!”

Varric slumps back into his chair, cradling his head in his hands. “And I don’t want to be in Broody’s shoes when he reads this letter, either,” he moans in despair, crumpling the sheet he’d been writing on and chucking it across the table. “Hawke, I’m _doomed.”_

“It’s alright, Varric,” she says, seemingly having sobered up somewhere between _protagonist_ and _Broody._ “I mean, it’s just a crush.”

“A crush?” Varric says, incredulous. _“A crush?_ I was thinking in _rhyme_ the other day, Hawke!”

The two friends look at each other, before simultaneously shuddering at a shared memory of Varric’s Hanged Man suite littered with scrap papers full of crossed-out verses.

“Wow, that _is_ terrible,” Hawke says, throwing him a pitying glance. “But have you considered, Varric, that maybe you’re making too big of a deal out of this?”

“I was rhyming, Hawke. _Rhyming.”_

“Not that. _That’s_ terrible. But this whole _protagonist_ thing you’re twisting yourself up over?” Hawke looks at him straight in the eye and says: “That’s bullshit, Varric.”

“I write stories for a living, Hawke. I know a protagonist when I see one.”

 _“No,”_ she says firmly. “You stop that protagonist bullshit _right now,_ Varric Tethras. She’s a person, not a character.”

“The best characters _are_ people, Hawke.”

“Varric,” Hawke says seriously, “does she make you happy?”

“She does _now,”_ Varric groans. “But what about tomorrow? Or next week? Or after we defeat Corypheus? What about three years down the line if the blighted anchor we still barely know anything about tries to kill her again like it did when the Breach first opened?”

“You don’t know that,” she says, soothing. “You can’t know that any of that’ll happen, Varric.”

“Hawke, if you haven’t noticed, she’s the _Inquisitor._ Fixing this fucked-up world is in her job description!”

“I mean, _I mean,_ she doesn’t have to be some doomed martyr just because you’ve got her pegged as a hero.”

“That’s rich coming from _you!”_ Varric accuses, his voice rising sharply. In the split second of silence after his outburst, the hurt that flashes in her eyes strikes him like a slap to the face. And then he notices, for the first time, that her eyes are just the _slightest_ shade off.

“Yeah,” she agrees, her eyes downcast. “Yeah, I guess it is, huh? But you know what?” And then she looks up at him, defiant, her expression so _Hawke_ it _hurts,_ and he has to look away. “Yeah, Fenris is going to be miserable. Yeah, I _get_ that. But you know what, Varric? And _this_ —I can say this without being a hypocrite: _Fenris wouldn’t be any happier right now even if he didn’t take a chance on me.”_

“What?”

But when Varric looks up, Hawke’s no longer there.

He wakes up.

He’s alone once more in the Main Hall, an unfinished letter to Fenris on his table, with the spots of wet ink he’d smudged in his sleep staring accusingly at him like so many dark, unblinking eyes.

 


End file.
